Years ago, when we were staying on an island in Cambodia in a little bungalow on the beach, Victor walked off the bed platform in the middle of the night and fell down a few feet. He wasn’t fully awake and somehow didn’t hurt himself.
When his mom heard this story, she laughed, “Oh, he used to sleepwalk all the time when he was a child! Once, he walked out of the house barefoot and went down the street in the middle of the night!”
Victor has never sleepwalked as an adult, but since then, we’ve always made sure that he doesn’t sleep not too far from the ground. So, as we were buying overnight train tickets in Uzbekistan, we always made sure to get him a lower bunk bed. For the Tashkent – Bukhara train, we booked two lower berths for him and his mom and one upper one for me in a semi-private compartment.
I was excited and nervous for my first Uzbekistan train journey. We’ve done overnight trains before, in Europe, Egypt, and India and while good night sleep was not guaranteed, it was always an adventure. We stowed away our luggage and settled into our compartment. The attendant brought bed linens and we were about to start making our beds, when an old Uzbek woman walked in, accompanied by her middle-aged son.
It turned out she was booked in our cabin... on the top bunk. She spoke neither Russian nor English and her son was only there to send her off. He asked us if it was possible for her to switch to one of the lower berths. To be clear – there was absolutely no way a woman of her age was ever going to climb up to the top bunk.
Victor had at this point left the cabin, to give more space to the old woman and her son. Victor’s mom and I looked at each other.
“Can you push me up there?” she asked.
“One way to find out!” I said.
After a few minutes of grunting, lifting, and pushing, his mom finally managed to get up on the top bunk. The old woman and her son profusely thanked us, said good-byes to each other and he left. Once Victor got back, he was confused to see his mother up on the top bunk.
He tried to tell her that he will take the top bunk, but she cheerfully said, “I am already up here and I am not coming down until tomorrow!”
I was relieved it all worked out, the last thing I needed was to spend the whole night worrying about him sleep walking off the top bunk.
The train journey itself was pretty non-eventful. The train left Tashkent at 10:30 pm and arrived at Bukhara at 6 am, giving us plenty of time to get a full night’s sleep. We were woken up around 5:30 am by the train attendant collecting bed linens and announcing the upcoming stop. We successfully maneuvered Victor’s mom from the top bunk to the floor, while the old lady watched from her berth, either cheering us on in Uzbek or praying for a safe landing.
Our next overnight train, from Navoi to Nukus, was just the two of us, and once again we booked two lower berths. I was relieved to see that our compartment companions were two women in their early twenties who had no trouble climbing up to the top bunks. The problem was that they had each brought a gigantic suitcase that wouldn't fit in the overhead rack or under the lower berths. There was nowhere to put them except in the narrow aisle between our beds. Once the suitcases were rolled into our compartment, there was no room to stand, let alone walk around.
We turned off the lights, and Victor fell asleep almost immediately. I lay awake wondering how I was supposed to get to the bathroom during the night without climbing over two enormous suitcases. Then the train picked up speed, and something in our compartment began to creak. Loudly. Rhythmically.
After a few minutes, I realized there was no chance I was falling asleep with that metallic clanging. I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to track down the source of the noise, nudging the suitcases, checking the lock, the folding ladder, the window, the blinds, anything that looked remotely capable of making that infernal racket. Eventually, I collapsed back into my bed, exhausted and thoroughly annoyed, and... somehow fell asleep.
When I woke the next morning, the creaking was gone. So were both of the girls and their gigantic suitcases. I have no idea how they managed to get out of the compartment without waking either of us, but I am deeply grateful they did.
The strangest train ride, however, was from Nukus to Urgench. We boarded at four in the morning and had only three and a half hours before arriving. Since the attendant was supposed to wake us thirty minutes before our stop, we were realistically looking at only three hours of sleep.
As we walked through the train, I noticed that every compartment was empty except one. A large, pot-bellied man was snoring thunderously on a lower berth with the door to his compartment wide open. We passed one empty compartment after another until we finally reached ours.
It was filthy. Crumbs covered the beds, table, and floor. Empty plastic bottles sat on the table, and a bag of garbage had been left in the corner. We waited for the train attendant, but no one came. If we wanted any sleep at all, we couldn't afford to wait. We cleaned the compartment ourselves and were relieved to discover that bags containing clean bed linens had already been placed on each berth. We made the beds and fell asleep almost immediately.
Thankfully, I had set an alarm. Technically, there was no need as the attendant was supposed to wake us before Urgench. Instead, my alarm jolted me awake. Groggy and confused, I looked at my phone. Five minutes until arrival. That couldn't be right. I looked out the window and saw the train already approaching the station.
I shook Victor awake. We threw our shoes on, grabbed our backpacks, and hurried down the empty carriage, past the same pot-bellied man, who was somehow still snoring. There was no train attendant. No one had cleaned our compartment. No one had collected our bed linens. Most importantly, no one was here to unlock the train door or lower the steps to the platform.
The train rolled to a stop.
I started to panic. Should we run to another carriage and hope someone there could let us out?
Suddenly, the pot-bellied man came barreling down the aisle. He pounded on the door of one of the compartments and bellowed, "Urgench!"
Almost immediately, the door flew open, and a half-asleep train attendant stumbled out, pulling his uniform shirt over his head as he ran. He rushed past us, unlocked the train door, lowered the steps, and jumped onto the platform. His hair was completely disheveled, and his eyes were still glazed over with sleep. Yet the moment he reached the platform, he straightened up and stood at attention beside the train door, as though he hadn't been sound asleep less than thirty seconds earlier.
"This," I muttered to Victor, "is exactly what I look like when someone schedules an unexpected eight o'clock video call while I'm working from home."
Every overnight train we took in Uzbekistan felt like a little adventure. Despite all the little mishaps, we reached every destination, sometimes sleep-deprived, occasionally confused, and always with a new story to tell.
